Basement finishing has begun! With ripping stuff out...

I realize that most basement finishing projects probably don't begin with ripping out drywall and framework, but then again most basement projects don't deal with the previous owners of our house. So, yes, to begin the process of finishing our basement we have to start by ripping out drywall and some, if not all, of the framework that the previous owners did. This is because they did not pull any permits for the work so none of it is any good as far as the county is concerned. Quite honestly it wasn't good as far as we were concerned either since we couldn't use any of the outlets in one of the rooms without the cords overheating and destroying whatever we plugged in. Just what we want to happen with electricity right? (note: that was dripping in sarcasm).

Before we started the ripping out project Elizabeth talked to the county about what all we needed to do. We started out just by looking on the county website and that was intimidating as hell and started to freak us out. Luckily when she called the county and explained what was going on and our plans they gave her the name of one of the building officials who came out (free of charge!) to look at what we had going on. He said the previous owners were "f-ing idiots" and confirmed that yes, we needed to rip stuff out and proceeded to tell us how much the permit will cost (which is not as bad as we were thinking) and what all we needed to do to start. We might call on him again with some additional questions since he was so incredibly helpful to start.

So some things the idiots who owned the house before did :
- Have a SMALL closet right by the door, serving to close off the doorway which would have made it very hard to move any furniture into the bedroom.
- Left the light switches INSIDE the closet.
- Left the outlet boxes just hanging around in the basement.. not secured to ANYTHING at all. Just floating there in the middle of the wall.
- Did not add any additional insulation or fire blocking material that we can tell. This is a problem.

So things we have left to do:
- finish ripping out the drywall
- find out if we need to rip out the frame work
- get permit
- put in the frame work- all or just where the closet would go
- electric
- first inspection.

The order of the above list is not final and probably not in complete order, but it's a start, a very exciting start.

Mailbox sign

For some reason that I can't really explain I have a very strong dislike for our mailbox, and while it is

inexpensive to replace we just haven't gotten to it. However, I decided that I was going to take a step to make our mailbox look nicer-- so I made a new house number sign to hang underneath the mailbox. I did this partially because I wanted to, but also because the numbers aren't super obvious on the post when you're driving by. The next step is to paint the post and replace the mailbox, but that will come later.


So to make the sign I got the correct size wood plank from our local craft store- in this case I believe it was the 10 inch one. I also ordered new paint markers- which I am ridiculously excited about and have to resist the urge to go around the house and draw on every surface. So to make it I found some Basset Hound images online and traced them trying to find one that I liked. Once I did I traced it and colored on the other side of the tracing paper from the design. I flipped it back over and traced the outline of the basset directly onto the wood. This left a decent outline which I then outlined again with a pencil to make it darker. I repeated the process with the numbers. Finally, I used my paint markers to color in the basset. I repeated the process on the other side. After I left the design dry for a couple days I used an acrylic sealer from the store that is good on wood to seal it. It has yet to rain since we put it up though, so now we're just waiting for a good storm to see how it holds up :-) I really like the sign, although the dog doesn't reflect all the furbabies of the house anymore, it will stay just a basset.

So there we have it, one step closer to making our mailbox look nicer.

Flower bed number two!

For most people the 4th of July is a day for fireworks and cookouts and generally being lazy. Not so for Dork_syd and me! We are very lucky to have friends who were willing to come over on a holiday and help with the process of boxing in our flower beds. About a month ago the same friends came over and helped up with boxing in the first of the front flower beds- see the post about that here - this time the focus was on the right side as you look at our house.

This is a close up of the flower bed before ---->
we started working on it- even before we put mulched leaves down to help us visualize the size we wanted the flower bed to be. It's hard to tell from the picture but the side yard- and really the yard around the flower bed as a whole- slopes A LOT. Because of this the guys figured out the edge of this flower bed is going to have to be stair stepped because the top of the slope is higher than the front of the flower bed.  When they discovered that it slowed work down a bit because now not only did they have to dig out the basic trench that the landscape timbers would go in- they had to figure out the placement of the timbers and it proved to be a much more in depth process than it was for the first flower bed.

So between the heat and the difficulty of this side- and the fact that both of the guys had to work the next day they decided to make this flower bed a two-part process. Once they decided on that path they focused on figuring out and laying out the main frame work- cutting a minimal number of timbers since the measurements are likely to change once they are fastened down. When we gather for the finishing of the flower bed the guys just have to pull out all the timbers (explode them!) and work on drilling the holes for the re-bar support and nail them all down, cutting the timbers as they go.  I am very excited about the flower beds! Even not finished the front of the house is looking better and better!

After the flower beds are finished we will be working on pulling up the bushes since one of them is not there at all any more (it's asymmetrical -ARG!)and because the way they are growing I can't even trim them all to look the same without making the ones on the right bring to mind Charlie Brown's Christmas tree. We will then be looking into getting dirt/top soil to fill in the flower beds and the holes make from the roots. Planting will not happen until the spring most likely. We haven't 100% finalized what we're going to put in the flower beds but we're thinking of focusing on spreading plants, Dork_Syd would really like to put in some juniper bushes (which I'm good with) and I would like to put in some phlox. My parents have them and when they are in bloom they tend to grow over into their ditch and I think it would be really pretty to have them draping over the front of the flower beds. We'll see- we can always move the plants to a different location if we end up not liking them in those flower beds :-)

Order from Chaos

It seems like whenever we do a really good cleaning, everything becomes more chaotic before it becomes ordered again. Today was definitely one of those days. I was at work when Dork_Syd e-mailed me asking if I had any particular attachment to our current living room/kitchen furniture arrangement. The answer was no, so he rapidly informed me of his overwhelming desire to rearrange and what he was thinking- complete with pictures.

Well, I asked Dork_Syd to be the awesome hubby that I know he is when I was working and start cleaning. I really did just mean picking stuff up, and then he went above and beyond. He folded laundry and started thinking about how he wanted to mount our TV on the wall, but where it was just wasn't where he wanted to mount it. THEN he got to thinking about where he wanted to put it and how if we moved the china cabinets into the living room, and moved what wall the piano is on, and the sofa, and the chair how it would open up the doorway into the room. This makes us happy AND makes our slightly claustrophobic dog happy as well.  

So when I came home, the house looked chaotic...

So I jumped right in to help!  One of the things we both agreed on was the desire to center the piano so we used some painters' tape to mark center on the wall, and center on the piano ...

Next we emptied out- and went through our china cabinets deciding on giving away/selling some of our glass collection that we had no real special memories attached to them, which really isn't that much. So we moved the china cabinets and filled them back up. Then we moved the TV back into the living room and hooked all that back up. 

Clearly, this is still a work in progress. Around 10:00 PM we called it quits. Later this week I will be scrubbing our kitchen floors again (its been almost a year since I gave them a good scrubbing). After they dry we will bring up our dining room table and chairs so we can put them in the newly opened up kitchen. Doing that means that we can actually be adults and eat at a table instead of in front of the TV- which is more important when we have friends over.

Once we finish rearranging we'll post the final pictures :-) 

Saving Money pt 1: First round of utility usage cutback- hopefully.

So Superman and I have come to a decision- and that decision is that we are going to do our best to have the money on hand before we do any home repairs/additions/finishing. To do that we are going to have to work on cutting down some utility bills and work harder on paying down the remaining Credit Cards and various loans. Why are we doing this? Easy, because it's smarter, and we are all about being smarter.

Our first step in the process has been focusing on bringing down the utility bills. First, we had the money to buy a new toilet to replace the one that wouldn't stop running every 10-20 minutes- so we did. Now we live in a community where the water plant is not county owned, it's privately owned and that means that water is more expensive. We're on a community-well that is privately owned. It took me a little while to understand that- and that it means water is just more expensive. Our water bill since we moved in has been around $90 a month. I'm not happy about it- but I'm sharing the amount because, it's a water bill, I don't particularly care if you know how much our water bill is. However, we still feel like $90 a month is RIDICULOUS and we attributed a lot of that cost to the ever-running and not-at-all water efficient toilet. SO we bought a Glacier Bay Dual Flush, High efficiency toilet. I'm ridiculously excited about this new toilet- I never thought I would be so excited about toilet. ANYWAY, we installed it ourselves, which really was not as hard as one might think- though a bit on the yucky side- mostly because of the amount of rust the ever-running toilet had.

So we installed the new toilet and no more running water! It also doesn't have any leaks like the old one did and it flushes quieter and if I had to guess- I would even venture to say it regularly uses about 1/4 - 1/2 the water the old toilet used. It also looks SO MUCH BETTER and since it is high efficiency we should be able to get a tax write-off for it. Woohoo! We're looking forward to seeing how much of a difference it makes! 

Our new toilet! 

The other utility we're trying to reduce our monthly bill on is electricity. We were gone for a week in March and it knocked $50 off our monthly bill. We think a lot of that is the lack of cooking, TV watching and keeping the thermostat at 50 degrees Fahrenheit. However, we are determined to see how much we can knock off during the spring/summer/fall. Luckily our house is in the shade so hopefully that will help keep the house cool once we get the A/C going. But to help us keep the A/C off longer we finally bought a replacement fan for the one in our bedroom that died. We installed it last weekend, but we haven't used it yet because one of the electrical cords didn't tuck properly so it is hitting the motor and by the time we get home in the evening the light is fading too rapidly to fix it. So we will fix that this weekend hopefully! Despite that issue we've managed to only turn on the A/C once or twice in the past 2 weeks- hopefully we can keep that trend up!  We'll see how much of a difference it has made on the next billing cycle :-) 

This is the old, not working fan. 

New, soon to be fully functional fan!

So what's next?

On the utility front we're going to work on replacing our dishes with ones that fit in our dishwasher better. They will also be smaller so our portion sizes will automatically shrink so that will help with the grocery bill in theory as well (and help us loose weight!)

We're also working on reducing our grocery bill (cuz it's ridiculous- mostly my fault cuz I'm the one who does the shopping). I'm slowly starting the process of couponing- but I'm focusing on couponing the right way! We're starting off slow hoping to knock $50-$100 off our monthly grocery bill.  As we find ways to save I try to remember to share them here. 

So what's our goal for doing this again? 

1) Saving money for our projects- we're saving up for a deck and fence next year.

2) Pay off debt so we can get closer to being debt free! 

Pantry Makeover

This year for the holidays Superman and I requested that family give us gift cards instead of actual items. The main reason for this, is our desire to get things done around the house! That is one of the best gifts anyone can give us! So first thing we decided to do was fix our pantry shelves!

When Superman and I first moved into our house we were in a rush to get things set up so we could start making it our home. Also, to be truthful, we just closed on the house, we were broke. So we bought the cheapo $10 plastic shelves at the local home improvement store to serve as our pantry shelves. While they worked, it irritated my CDO (it's OCD but with the letters in alphabetical order, like they should be) to no end that I COULD NOT ORGANIZE IT because the shelves were too far apart to really do it right. So one of the first things we KNEW we had to do was fix the shelves. So we went to Home Depot ( we LOVE Home Depot) and got the metal shelves, I think they are associated with ClosetMaid but I'm not 100% sure on that.

So now Superman and I have wonderful metal shelves in our pantry that allows me to organize the pantry. It also means things don't fall off the shelves every time I try to get something out so I can cook.

So yay! That was our main project for today. Although, we (and by we, I mean Superman) also replaced the spray nozzle on our kitchen sink, and made the first change in our bathroom makeover by installing a new shower head. Next up is painting!



~)O(~ Elfie ~)O(~